Uber, Lyft Bail on Minneapolis After Dem-Run City Council Overrides Mayor’s Veto on Minimum Wage Ordinance
Lyft: “We support a minimum earning standard for drivers, but it should be done in an honest way that keeps the service affordable for riders. This ordinance makes our operations unsustainable…”
Democrats in Minnesota are scrambling to undo the damage done after the Minneapolis City Council passed a minimum wage ordinance related to “transportation network companies” that caused rideshare giants Uber and Lyft to follow through on threats to bail on the state’s largest city.
The city’s Democrat mayor, Jacob Frey, had opposed the measure and vetoed it when it came across his desk. But the City Council, which has zero Republicans, 12 Democrats, and one Democratic Socialist of America member, easily overrode the veto despite Frey’s objections and Uber’s and Lyft’s public statements that they would cease operations should the ordinance become law:
Both rideshare companies released statements condemning the City Council’s vote. Uber says it will leave the entire metro area, including the airport, on May 1 when the ordinance becomes law.
“We are disappointed the Council chose to ignore the data and kick Uber out of the Twin Cities, putting 10,000 people out of work and leaving many stranded,” Uber’s statement said. “But we know that by working together with all stakeholders — drivers, riders and state leaders — we can achieve comprehensive statewide legislation that guarantees drivers a fair minimum wage, protects their independence and keeps rideshare affordable.”
Lyft says it’ll shut down operations in Minneapolis on May 1, but it’s unclear if services will be affected in the wider metro area, like Uber’s plan.
“This ordinance is deeply flawed, and the rates it sets are far higher than what the state’s study suggested,” Lyft’s statement said. “We support a minimum earning standard for drivers, but it should be done in an honest way that keeps the service affordable for riders. This ordinance makes our operations unsustainable, and as a result, we are shutting down operations in Minneapolis when the law takes effect on May 1. We will continue to advocate for a statewide solution in Minnesota that balances the needs of riders and drivers and hope to return to Minneapolis as soon as possible.”
"Lyft and Uber to cease operations in Minneapolis after new minimum wage law"https://t.co/fmw1XjEcZD
"The rideshare services say that user prices would double if they stayed in the city." pic.twitter.com/SaD0mPU54c— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) March 16, 2024
As a result, some of the same members of the City Council who pushed for the ordinance are now calling for it to be reconsidered—and are also looking to the state to help rescue them:
On Thursday, during a Minneapolis council meeting, Council Member Andrea Jenkins gave notice that she intended to move for reconsideration of the ordinance. Jenkins voted for the bill twice, first during initial approval, then again to override the veto.
On Thursday, Jenkins said her motion would give council members the chance to make changes to bring about a “broader resolution” to this issue. She also said two council members, Aurin Chowdhury and Emily Koski, have been working with state lawmakers on a resolution.
When Jenkins was asked by the local media why the council proceeded forward with the original ordinance prior to the release of a state transportation department report on ridesharing income instead of waiting to review it so the ordinance could be tweaked, she had no good answers:
Despite the controversy, the council is now considering both the state data report on ride-hailing driver wages and their own data. FOX 9 asked why council members didn’t wait on the data release before passing the ordinance in the first place.
“We had been waiting on this data for quite some time,” Jenkins explained. “I have been asking folks from the state personally and there was no clear answer as to what was going on.”
[Council Vice President Aisha] Chugtai said she had no regrets about moving forward with the ordinance before getting the state data. “To be clear, none of us has any control over the actions of a multi-billion dollar corporation. They will do what they’re going to do. We will do what’s best for our city.”
Chugtai, I should note, is a former campaign manager for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN).
Adding to the pressures being put on the City Council to reconsider/revise the ordinance is how Uber and Lyft leaving Minneapolis would impact the elderly and disabled:
Minneapolis City Council, you own this. Answer to every disabled Minnesotan who no longer has transportation due to your hubris and bad governance. @lyft https://t.co/w3sVCGfG5o
— Ann Bauer (@annbauerwriter) March 17, 2024
Minneapolis forces higher wages for Uber and Lyft, they pull out of the city, now there are worries the handicapped will lose the ability to travel.
Socialism is the theory that you “help” vulnerable people by eliminating their jobs and making things unaffordable for them. pic.twitter.com/a9ccqaj5RA
— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) March 16, 2024
In 2023, Minnesota’s Democrat Gov. Tim Walz vetoed similar legislation after Uber said at the time that they would have no choice but to pull out of Minnesota:
In a letter Thursday announcing the veto, Waltz said that “rideshare drivers deserve fair wages and safe working conditions,” but said that “this is not the right bill to achieve these goals.”
He also argued that the bill would have made Minnesota “one of the most expensive states in the country for rideshare.”
A similar ordinance from the Seattle City Council that went into effect at the first of the year also backfired, with Door Dash and Uber Eats drivers complaining their workload had declined as a result of residents deleting the apps off their phones over elevated fees that made meal deliveries way too expensive.
As to what happens in Minneapolis over the next month? We’ll keep you posted.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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Comments
Does history record any leftist proposal that actually worked?
No. The problem is that they have zero understanding of the reason things work as they do. So they go in imagining that what is will remain even if they destroy it. As here. They truly believed that people would keep ordering the same amount of food, even if it wound up costing $35 for a sandwich. They are literally confused and shocked that it’s not happening.
This is also why they are shocked and confused that their woke destruction of the institutions have destroyed public trust. They thought the trust was there forever, no matter what, because institution. They didn’t get (and still don’t) that the trust was there because the institutions they’ve destroyed with partisan woke ideology were not previously woke nor (overtly) partisan nor particularly ideological beyond once-agreed upon tenets of general American culture and society.
These are very stupid people. And they keep doing the same thing over and over, truly expecting different results. Raise entry-level jobs intended as teenager or retired people’s extra pocket money to four times the minimum wage, and yes, fast food will cost more . . . all the way down the line. The minimum wage is zero. As they are finding out in Minneapolis.
This article and your comment sideswipe.
This article and your comment sideswipe.
Ugh.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/outsider-legal-genius-seth-tillman-trump
“What if there’s something we forgot in part because no one ever thought they had to write it down?” as he put it to me. He believed that the meaning of seemingly innocuous or self-evident terms in the Constitution belonged to this category of vanished knowledge.”
lol. As if the founders didn’t write anything about the Constitution, newspaper articles and booklets that explained every facet of it.
Any time their plans don’t work they just say GOP obstructed or they didn’t get enough commitment.
Obamacare, Common core, Social Security, Welfare, Immigration reform, etc etc
They don’t have that excuse in states, though, or cities that are thoroughly under the heel of Democrats. As here.
There was plenty of evidence from states that ObamaCare wouldn’t and couldn’t work as intended, but they ignored it. Ditto the crap about a guaranteed income and all the other absolutely ludicrous commie crap they come up with. They think all things will remain the same and that their “improvements” will work because they think that all things will remain the same . . . despite constantly learning that they don’t and won’t. Stupid people, as I said. 😛
Fuzzy, you are correct that they don’t have that excuse in states or Dem-run cities, but they will still use it because they are, as you pointed out, stupid. But they are more than simply stupid; they’re venal liars who are convinced of their superiority and righteousness.
Not disagreeing but explain to me why republicans keep paying for it?
Actually, yes. Stalin promised to make all the people equal in the USSR and starved millions into the grave to make it happen
Hitler also believed that every (Aryan) German should have the same living standard. As he bought up buildings and mansions for himself.
Well, those people ended up equal, didn’t they.
Of course. Stalin set out to depopulate Ukraine and did a great job. Pol Pot decided to go after anyone not a farmer and managed to get that done, too.
Finally, these companies are learning the proper way to respond to socialist politicians. If Uber and Lyft and done this when CA enacted AB5, we probably wouldn’t have Julie Su now trying to ram it down our throats nationally. Instead the rideshares sponsored an initiative that effectively got themselves an exception to the law. We need more Atlases to shrug.
“The real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they lose their jobs…”
Thomas Sowell
Yep. A choice to take X action has Y consequences. As those of us with common sense understand those consequences are sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes a bit of both. Leftists don’t understand why there should be any negative consequences for their choice of action. To them the very foreseeable consequences are ‘unfair’ and probably imposed by evil capitalists and/or the patriarchy and they shouldn’t have to deal with them.
Instead of taking accountability, which lets face it is leftist kryptonite, they will still crow about their virtuous motives and blame greedy capitalism for this result. The folks who need rides won’t get one and the folks who wanted a way to make honest $ in a side hustle/gig are out of luck. Both groups will bear the burden of the leftists folly.
Chief, why should we care?
These people voted for Democrats. They got what Democrats give.
Lay down with skunks, wake up smelling like skunks.
I say screw them. Walk to your doctor’s appointment.
Because genius, it’s our country too. We are collateral damage in these schemes.
Well “genius, the states are supposed to be “laboratories of democracy” or something like that. So let them screw up their laboratories so we know what works and doesn’t work.
I didn’t give a shit about people who live in a shit hole. They voted for it, let the live it.
Genius!
But thanks. Now I know that even “conservatives” and “republicans” will shit on each other.
How am I “collateral damage:” in this case. I can still hire an Uber if I so chose. I can still hire a Lyft vehicle if I so chose. Nothing has changed for me where I live and it’s not likely ever to happen. So yes, screw them. Screw ’em all.
Care? Not exactly. If it is a State/local issue and it isn’t going on in my local area I don’t have a dog in the fight so no I don’t ‘care’ b/c the folks impacted gotta fight their own battles and I ain’t coming to save them.
I do think it is worthwhile to point out how leftists operate and how their ideology impacts their policy preferences so that we can all learn from example elsewhere v learning by directly experiencing the negative impact ourselves.
Beyond that hopefully some of those misguided voters who selected leftist politicians in these areas directly facing bitter experience come to understand the folly of allowing leftist ideologues to run their local Govt. Some folks have to put their hand on the hit stove before they learn the lesson.
By the way, importing millions of illegals per year is another way to find out how close to zero the true minimum wage can get for certain jobs.
Again. Why should we care?
These are leftist shitholes. When the voters find out they are out of work, they can eat cat food… if they can find it.
More companies need to do this–all leftists should have to suffer the consequences of their ill-considered policies–and as for the politician who voted for this twice and now wants to reconsider it, she must be a special kind of stupid
Biden signs $1.2tn spending package as government shutdown is averted. So where are all of the Trump supported Congressmen? Where are all of you people who support Trump and who rightly oppose this? Do you just sit on your fat asses and post comments on LI? Or do you get off of your fat asses and actually do something to stop this? I want to know. I think I know the answer to this question.
You don’t know shit.
I don’t know if you have heard. Trump isn’t president.
‘It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.’
What are you doing about it, JR?
Speaking of which, what did YOU do, keyboard commando? I have four kids, a husband and a medical practice. What do you have to contribute but whinging, diatribe and BS?
I am Dr. Sam’s granddaughter Dr. Miranda, womanning the helm tonight, for the record.
As for the omnibus just passed….all six GoP members of the HoR from Alabama voted NO. As did both US Senate from Alabama.
As for this local ordinance on minimum wage, seems to me that the best course is to keep the Federal govt out of the discussion and stop handing power to the Feds to intervene in our daily lives.
Oops I fat fingered that up vote for jr. was supposed to be downvote.
You can add the medical community to those groups who has lost trust.
‘ To be clear, none of us has any control over the actions of a multi-billion dollar corporation. They will do what they’re going to do. We will do what’s best for our city.’
I’m not even sure if this person or any of the others can actually be made to understand that they’re not doing what’s best for their city. Sigh…
People who have never had to employ someone, making decisions for people who employ someone.
The solution is simple. Minneapolis needs to sure Uber and Lyft for like $1 B (each) and then use the money to buy EVs for poor people.
Leftism is one stage thinking
I remember when International Harvester said they’d permanently shut down the plant if the workers rejected the offer and struck, and they struck, and they closed the plant forever. The union spokesman claimed a moral victory.
Lived this at a northern paper plant. Union boss rolled north and urged all the workers to hang tough on the strike after the company said they would have no choice but to close it down if the union didn’t compromise. Union Boss with the gold chains convinced them to hold strong. The plant is now a parking lot for storage containers and 300 high paying jobs are now g0ne. Union Boss went back to Boston still with a job, unemployment in the town went to 75% and I bought quite a bunch of snowblowers, chainsaws and such at yard sale prices to turn over at a profit. Well done, Union Boss’s.
The union does what is best for THE UNION. They don’t giveacrap about the workers as anything other than a replaceable moron that pays dues.
I’ve been in a lot of union operations from paper mills to the steel mill in Allentown. I’d say you are correct.
we used to have Internationals …
super A and a super C
good equipment … sigh …
now they merged with CASE ..
10k Uber and Lyft employees out of work and thousands of handicapped folks stranded? Gee, that’s a lot of likely voters. Do you suppose this might be factoring into the Mpls city council’s thinking about revisiting its idiotic ordinance?
One would hope that, Mark, but this is Minneapolis, the city that overwhelmingly votes for Ilhan Omar, Keith (X) Ellison, and Tim Walz. I have a planned yearly trip to Minneapolis in October, and usually take Uber or Lyft from the airport to downtown. This year I may just stay home.
Par for the course. Virtue signaling > economic reality for leftist pols, especially in blue areas.
Austin similarly tried to kneecap Uber/Lyft (albeit at the request of taxi companies, who’d bought several city councilcritters). Fortunately, the Texas Legislature (even the RINO faction that controls the Texas House by colluding with the Dems) was not amused.
Like it has done with many other nutty leftist Austin ordinances, the Texas Legislature spiked the law. No chance of that occurring in MN, unfortunately.
I just wish the Texas Legislature would follow through on what was proposed when the Austin City Council passed a “defund the police” ordinance a couple of years ago — a bill that would have put the Austin Police Department directly under the control of the State Police, with the costs of running APD deducted from Austin’s sales tax revenues (which are collected by the state). Faced with that threat, the Austin City Council backed down — but their hostility toward the police, coupled with a Soros-backed county DA who’s more interested in prosecuting police officers than criminals, has led to an exodus of officers that has led to Austin being essentially unpoliced.
Another day; another corrosive and idiotic diktat decreed by the vile Dhimmi-crat apparatchiks. Impoverishing independent contractors seeking to make some extra scratch, while inconveniencing citizens and endangering public safety (by reducing the availability of cabs for passengers who are unable/unwilling to drive).
I find it interesting how this is being reported in the corporate press. I read an editorial this morning about the brave people in MN Gov’t standing up to Uber and Lyft to pay people a living wage and we need more municipalities to follow suit. None of these numbnuts have any clue how capitalism and companies actually work. If the drivers don’t like what they are getting paid they can quit and find other work. I talk to them all the time picking up food and they are quite happy to work when they want with no real boss.
The libs have been going after the gig/1099 workers for years now. They can’t stand independent workers. The libs want to control every aspect of your life. Sounds a lot like communism to me. What say you? FJB
Yeah, they’re the champions of the workin’ man fer shure!
For anyone who forgot, in 2016, the Philly city council was busily railroading an ordinance through that would have outlawed Uber and Lyft service — to appease the organized cabbies’ lobby — until someone pointed out that they were hosting the DNC convention, and without Uber and Lyft they had zero hope of transporting all the delegates to the places they had to and wanted to go with just the organized “monopoly” cab services. So they astutely held off until AFTER the convention before sticking it to the gigworkers.